KIEV (Dispatches) – Russia has been targeting the eastern Donetsk region over the past day and in Nikopol, further west, several dozen buildings, gas pipelines and power lines, regional governors said on Sunday.
A day earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address that authorities had found a mass grave containing the bodies of 17 soldiers in Izium, some of which he said bore signs of torture.
Residents of Izium have been searching for dead relatives at a forest grave site where emergency workers began exhuming bodies last week. The causes of death for those at the grave site have not yet been established, although residents say some died in an air strike.
Ukrainian officials said last week they had found 440 bodies in the woodlands near Izium.
The Kremlin has not commented on the discovery of the graves, but in the past Moscow had repeatedly denied deliberately attacking civilians or committing atrocities.
Izium’s mayor said on Sunday that work at the site would continue for another two weeks.
“The exhumation is underway, the graves are being dug up and all the remains are being transported to Kharkiv,” Valery Marchenko told state television.
Elsewhere in the region, residents of towns recaptured after six months of war, were returning.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday brushed off Ukraine’s swift counteroffensive and said that Moscow would respond more forcefully if its troops were put under further pressure.
U.S. President Joe Biden, asked what he would say to Putin if he was considering using such weapons, replied: “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. It would change the face of war unlike anything since World War Two.” A clip of comment in an interview with CBS programme “60 Minutes” was released by CBS on Saturday.
Moscow and Kiev have accused each other of shelling around the plant that has damaged buildings and disrupted power lines needed to keep it cooled and safe. The plant was reconnected with the Ukrainian electricity grid after one of its power lines has been repaired, the United Nations nuclear watchdog said on Saturday. It warned, however, the situation at the plant “remains precarious.”
Ukraine has also launched a major offensive to recapture territory in the south, where it hopes to trap thousands of Russian troops cut off from supplies on the west bank of the Dnipro River, and retake Kherson. Kherson is the only large Ukrainian city Russia has captured intact since the start of the war.